


A Love-Sick Fool (I'll Carry All Your Books to School)

by Rinzler



Category: The Flash (TV 2014), The Flash - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M, professor!wells
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-18
Updated: 2016-08-18
Packaged: 2018-08-09 12:15:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7801492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rinzler/pseuds/Rinzler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Senior!Len keeps getting turned on by Junior!Barry and it’s the most embarrassing thing ever. Barry has absolutely no idea. (ft. Mick ‘Done With Your Shit’ Rory)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Halfway across the cafeteria, Barry is struggling to eat an ice cream bar from the vending machine.

It’s one of the strawberry-flavored ones that taste absolutely horrible, like preservatives and lies, so there’s always a much larger supply than the chocolate-caramel ones. The ice cream is steadily melting from the late August heat let in through the open doors to the courtyard. Rivulets of candy-pink shell coating drip down the inside of Barry’s wrist. He licks them up, switching between the mess on his skin and trying to shove the entire bar into his mouth, making faces when it doesn’t fit. More ice cream drips messily down his chin, and a few dots of white have made it onto his cheek.

“Stop staring,” Mick grunts beside him. “And hide your boner, for chrissake.”

“I’m trying,” Len snaps back, then nearly swallows his tongue when Barry manages to fit the entire bar into his mouth and succeeds. His cheeks are flushed and he looks unfairly pleased with himself. Len shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

Mick snorts. “No you’re not,” he says.

No, Len isn’t.


	2. Chapter 2

Barry is wearing a new pair of jeans today. They’re not skinny jeans, precisely, but they’re much tighter than any other pair he owns, hugging his thighs and ass in a way that makes them look even more spectacular than usual.

The new jeans are also significantly more lower cut than Barry’s usual pairs. Every time Barry shifts in his seat or reaches down to get something out of his backpack on the floor, his shirt rides up, revealing a pale sliver of unmarked skin. Though Len did catch what might be a hint of freckles. Hard to tell in the poor classroom lightning.

“Do I have any volunteers to answer question seven?” Wells asks, temporarily drawing Len’s attention back to the lecture. He slumps a bit lower in his seat as Wells scans the classroom.

A hand flies up in the first row, and no one is surprised when Wells says “Care to join me at the board, Mr. Allen?” indulgently.

Barry grins widely and jumps out of his seat, grabbing his notebook as he makes his way to the chalkboard. Wells passes Barry the chalk and steps to the side.

As Barry starts to draw the chemical structure and proper notation for some element or another, Len loses track of the lecture again. The top of the board is a bit too tall for even someone with Barry’s height to reach easily, so he has to stretch up on his tiptoes to reach.

Fuck. Barry has dimples in his lower back.

Len slumps even lower in his seat and surreptitiously pulls his jacket down.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Tiffany, you useless lesbian!"

Barry trips in the middle of the hallway and drops his armful of textbooks and two folders. The books land with a litany of heavy thuds, and papers scatter in all directions. It’s only two more minutes until class starts, and the hallways aren’t as crowded as they were a moment ago, so luckily no one steps on him- but nobody stops to help either. They all just keep moving.

Mick pokes Len in the side. “Go help him up,” he says.

Len is paralyzed, staring at Barry’s ass. “Huh?” He manages. “What?”

“I said go help him up!” Mick says and tries to push Len forward. Barry has gathered most of his books back into his arms and is grabbing the first folder.

Len still doesn’t move. Ten second pass and Barry is standing up again, textbooks and papers in one giant messy pile as he practically runs down the hallway at the sound of the warning bell. One minute left until classes start again.

“You’re fucking useless,” Mick tells Len, and punches him in the arm.


	4. Chapter 4

Len managed to avoid having to take a tech credit class for the first three years of high school, convinced that doing so would be a waste of his time. Most of what the tech classes teach is horribly out of date, and they move at an agonizingly slow pace anyway. If he wanted to learn to code, Len could learn on his own time. As a result, he never regretted leaving the class until his last year of high school.

Well, he never regretted it until now.

On the other side of the classroom, Barry bites at the end of the pen in his mouth, gaze focused intently on the screen in front of him. The classroom is brightly lit, but the glow of the screen still manages to illuminate his face in a blue-toned hue. It’s all too easy to watch in detail the way Barry nibbles at the end of the pen, biting down, twirling it around in his mouth.

Len takes a deep breath and redirects his gaze at the screen in front of him. There are only fifteen minutes left in class. He can control himself enough not to look at Barry for fifteen minutes. 

His concentration doesn’t last long. A moment later, he finds himself looking back at Barry and the completely indecent things he’s doing with his mouth. 

Len is just about to start banging his head on the desk when Barry’s face lights up and he leans forward, tapping rapidly at the keyboard in front of him. He’s probably just solved one of the problems on the worksheet they’re supposed to be doing. 

His lips part slightly, and Len watches as the pen slides down, drawn by gravity. The cheap black plastic is slick and shiny from the heat of Barry’s mouth. He catches it before it falls to the desk, but rather than putting it down, Barry slides the pen back into his mouth. His cheeks hollow slightly before he bites down again, scrolling to the next problem on the worksheet.

Whatever the hell Len did in a past life to deserve this, he sure hopes it was enjoyable, because this never-ending torture isn’t.


	5. Chapter 5

“This is actually pathetic,” Lisa whispers to Mick. He just grunts in return, focused on the lighter in his hands and the tiny scraps of notebook paper he’s slowly burning with it. 

Sitting in the row of bleachers in front of them, Len rolls his eyes and does his best to ignore her. Lisa’s started coming over to the highschool for lunch, because it’s only three blocks away from the middle school she attends. Having an extra forty-five minutes to check up on his baby sister is pretty great. 

What’s not great is her habit of commenting on Len’s “new obsession.”

His new obsession that is currently sitting at the other end of the bleachers with his group of friends, nose buried in a textbook. Len leans back slightly and notices the way the bright sunlight turns his hair golden-brown. 

“I mean, seriously,” Lisa continues, “is he ever going to actually talk to him?”

“I can hear you,” Len says. Leaning back a couple extra inches means he gets to fully appreciate the way Barry’s thin red t-shirt stretches across his shoulders. It’s cute, the way the kid looks out of all the layers he usually wears. Not as cute as the freckles that dot the back of his neck and the way he bites his lower lip when he’s concentrating really hard on something, but cute. 

“That’s the point,” Lisa says. When Len doesn’t respond, she lets out an aggravated groan and grabs her sparkly gold-sequined backpack. “I could just leave, you know.”

“Uh-huh,” Len says absently. Barry is laughing as something Caitlin just said, curled in on himself, shoulders shaking with mirth. It’s adorable.

Lisa huffs and stands up, swinging her backpack over her shoulder. “Even the chance to spy on Cisco isn’t worth this secondhand embarrassment. Bye, Len. Bye, Mick.”

“Bye, Lisa,” they chorus, and Len pretends not to notice Mick slipping Lisa yet another pack of sugary gum and a box of matches. Hellions, the both of them. 

It’s only a few minutes after his sister’s left that Mick finishes burning the paper scraps, sits up, and leans forward to talk to Len.

“You know she’s right,” Mick says, and Len groans and buries his head in his hands. 

“I know,” he says despairingly. “I know.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All of the asks about this AU (so far).

_Could we get Barry's side of the high school? Like is he aware of what he's doing to Len? Is he trying to get Len's attention because it's Len's last year?_  
Anonymous

Part of the prompt was that Barry has ‘absolutely no idea’ what he’s doing to Len, so I’m not sure how much of his side I would be able to write.

Barry is definitely peripherally aware of Len, in the way that all students are aware of who the hottest kids in the school are. This AU prompt didn’t state what kind of student Len was, so I’m headcanoning him as straight-A’s and captain of the ice hockey team (not that you’d know the first part by looking at him). So there’s no way Barry doesn’t know who Len is, he just doesn’t really pay attention to him.

Maybe Barry eventually realizes that every time he looks at Len, he sees Len looking back, but that’s about it. Barry would never believe a guy like Len would be interested in a guy like him, so this AU would be largely dependent on Len making the first move.

 

_For your high school AU, is Len ever going to make a move or will Lisa and Mick force his hand?  
_ Anonymous

Oh, Len is absolutely never going to make a move unless forced. He’s a planner, he won’t do anything without thinking it through. Except when it comes to Barry, Len can’t even think about him without blushing and stuttering and wanting to bang his head against the wall. Therefore, he has no plan. He’s too busy trying not to think too _hard_ about Barry. 

So if Lisa and Mick force his hand, it will probably be Lisa who comes up with the plan and blackmails everyone else into participating. I think she’d also take the lead in order to have an excuse to spend more time around Cisco…

Mick is just there to look threatening and burn stuff. He could care less is Len ends up with Barry, seeing his best friend be an awkward bumbling dork instead of the smooth, suave, bad-boy caricature he’s built himself up to be is just too funny. 

 

_Do Barry's friends ever figure out what's going on in your amazing HS AU? Do they clue Barry in or do they try to steer Barry away because of bad rumors they've heard about Len?  
_ Anonymous

Legit the best part of the show is how someone as intelligent as Barry can be so clueless. As for his friends…

Caitlin’s pretty observant, so I think she’d be the person to figure it out first. I sort of picture her keeping it to herself for a while, though. Caitlin isn’t sure how she feels about the Snarts, or any of ‘their crowd.’ She’d want to protect Barry but would have no idea how to handle the situation. With that in mind, she’d definitely tell Cisco. He has a semi-direct line to Len through Lisa, so maybe they could try and figure out what his intentions actually are! 

Cisco would be totally disbelieving at first, but I think he’d understand. (Headcanoning a bit of a friend!crush by Cisco on Barry here.) After all, who _wouldn’t_ want to kiss Barry Allen? 

I don’t think they would really do anything, though. There are bad rumors about Len, sure, but not nearly as bad as some of the rumors about other kids. Len doesn’t beat anyone up in the hallways. Or steal lunch money. Or try and copy homework. Or cheat on tests. Seriously, he’s the nicest ‘bad boy’ in the school. How is he even a villain? So there’s no point trying to steer Barry away because of bad rumors, because that excuse wouldn’t hold up. 

As for cluing him in… I don;t think that would happen until Lisa forces Len’s hand and Len admits directly to Barry that he likes him. Or, you know, he tries. 


End file.
